Business

The environment of aplomb in which the Small Business Bureau was launched at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in October 2013 was always felt in some quarters to be a dead giveaway insofar as its likely success in bearing the weight of nurturing a robust small-business infrastructure was concerned.

Increasingly, stories that derive from journalistic ‘intrusions’ into the lives of Guyanese women, some of them shockingly young when account is taken of the extent of the responsibilities that they already bear, serve to remind that much of what gets said by officialdom on the subject of gender and opportunity amounts to no more than ‘old hat.’

The recent accreditation of the Government Analyst Food & Drugs Department (GA-FDD) as a Conformity Assessment Body (CAB) to the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) 17020 and 17025 standards could mark a “game-changing development” for the productive sector in Guyana since the accreditation now equips the country to make critical and internationally recognised standards assessments of some types of local goods being produced here and targeting international markets.

The Head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is calling for the urgent implementation of active fiscal policies with a gender approach, as a specific part of the wider menu of measures to mitigate the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women.

From the era when ‘joints’ of ‘weed’ had to be smoked discreetly on the streets of Jamaica, the smokers keeping a watchful eye out for the long arm of the law, marijuana has worked its way up the ladder of ‘comfort’ substances, the production and marketing of the herb blossoming into an industry that will likely grow exponentially in the years ahead.

A fifteen-member group of international organisations concerned with ensuring that issues of forest conservation and the greening of economies remain at the heart of the human development agenda, last week made a high-profile international appeal for forests and tree landscapes to be brought to the centre of the global building back effort “for a more resilient and sustainable future.”

Navin Hansraj may be a computer engineer by training, though these days, his pursuits in agro-processing qualify him as the consummate hustler, one whose pursuit of accomplishment pushes him in several different directions.

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday October 22, 2020 Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 885’s trading results showed consideration of $6,525,349 from 31,027 shares traded in 17 transactions as compared to session 884’s trading results which showed consideration of $19,427,631 from 111,412 shares traded in 29 transactions.

The fact that even though our two international airports reported earlier this week that they were ready to execute the protocols and procedures associated with the re-opening of the facilities there remaining a measure of public doubt about the wisdom of the decision, is entirely understandable. 

What has been, for several months, a sustained global discourse on the role of so-called ‘lockdowns’ in pushing back the spread of the dreaded novel coronavirus as against its impact on the socio-economic well-being of countries, is gathering a fresh head of steam.

Beyond the post COVID-19 recovery process which Latin America and the Caribbean will have to endure, countries in the hemisphere will also have to deal with what a United Nations study completed in July says will be “the worst recession in the region in a century that is likely to trigger a 9.1% contraction in regional GDP this year.”

With approximately six months of his tenure as President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) remaining, Jamaican-born Dr William Warren Smith has been talking up the role that the Bank has been playing in supporting the growth of the economies of the region.

With the rampaging COVID-19 having quite possibly snuffed out the entrepreneurial ambitions of large numbers of Guyana’s emerging agro-processors and seriously dimmed the enthusiasm of a great many more,  twenty-two-year-old Kelshine Griffith who was named the Stabroek Business’ Agro Processor of the Year at the end of 2019 has an impressive grasp of the situation.

The Group of 20 nations, representing the world’s biggest economies, agreed Wednesday to extend the suspension of debt payments by an additional six months to support the most vulnerable countries in their fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Almost 60 per cent of low-income households in Jamaica, that is, those earning less than the minimum wage, have registered at least one job loss linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the findings of a recent survey undertaken by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

                                           Kitco Market Data Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday October 15, 2020 Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 884’s trading results showed consideration of $19,427,631 from 111,412 shares traded in 29 transactions as compared to session 883’s trading results which showed consideration of $14,629,903 from 171,501 shares traded in 23 transactions.